With its stunning, hand-painted scenery and animation, lovable characters and Studio Ghibli feel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Whispered World was a children’s animated film, bringing back memories of watching Disney classics with your Grandma and crying at The Lion King (That wasn’t just me, right?).
A homage to classics in the point-and-click adventure genre, The Whispered World has the potential to become a classic in its own right. A modern fantasy set in a nostalgic world, the game follows the adventures of Sadwick — melancholy clown — and his pet caterpillar Spot, who turns out to be infinitely more useful than your average everyday bug.
Sadwick is part of a traveling circus, but is a very downhearted soul, and has recurring nightmares of the world falling apart. In the forest he meets a messenger of the King, on a quest to deliver an important artifact to the Kingdom of Corona, who confirms that the nightmares Sadwick has been having are, in fact, coming true.
The narrative of The Whispered World is a deep and emotional one, with a dream-like fantasy about it; the character of Sadwick providing a hilarious contrast with his downbeat and gloomy cynicism. The story itself has a huge twist at the end — which I won’t spoil — which isn’t completely unexpected, but is a lovely end to a charming story that will keep you glued to your PC.
Covering 4 chapters, and over 12 hours of gameplay (depending on your experience with this sort of puzzle game, of course) The Whispered World supports the narrative with lots of puzzles in true point-and-click fashion. The puzzles themselves are varied and interesting, although sometimes using common sense will not be enough to solve them, and often the answer will simply be stumbled across by accident. Considering the revealing twist at its conclusion, there is little replayability to The Whispered World, except for the joy of experiencing it again – like you would with a good book or movie.
The animation is smooth and stylized, especially the movements of Sadwick himself – with the childlike bounce as he walks adding to the feeling of innocence he has. The caterpillar Spot, who is a lovable character overall, also has some interesting animations as he shape shifts to fit the task he is set to. He has a set of forms which unlock as you progress through the game, such as fire form which can burn through obstacles, or a flat, pancake-like form, which allows him to slide into small spaces. This adds another level of gameplay, but can cause the game to jitter and struggle a little as the new form loads — just another reason you could be sitting around waiting for this game, along with the loading times between each level.
Not to say it isn’t worth the wait, as the levels themselves are all imaginative, taking on a familiar 2D side-scrolling style with an unparalleled level of careful detail and parallax layers. Despite taking place in a large game world, no two environments look the same, and all have a certain air of atmosphere about them; a perfect setting for the narrative taking place. The puzzles are well integrated into the background, and there is the option to press the space bar, which will light up all the active clickable objects in the scene if they don’t stand out. This comes in handy for those puzzles which don’t follow common sense, but does make it easy to get out of those infuriatingly difficult situations, which is not always a good thing if you’re looking for a challenge.
As mentioned before, one main issue with The Whispered World is the fluctuation of the difficulty level of the puzzles. There is no organized arc of complexity as the game progresses and they feel completely random, if not for the fact that they relate to the environment they’re in. There are few hints to speak of, apart from the space bar feature, which doesn’t tell you the relevance of the things it is highlighting, or the order in which you should be doing things. There’s more than one occasion in this game where you will have to make a big backtrack, which was obviously never intended, and tends to break the immersion into the story somewhat.
For most of the way, the game draws you into the world of Silentia and all the many places within it with a winning combination of narrative, charming characters, and melodic tones of befitting background music. The music creates a fantastic, dreamlike atmosphere which received a nomination in the German Game Developer Awards for “Best Soundtrack” in 2009. The opening track, a classic piece of fantasy orchestral fare, is one which stands out, setting the scene for an epic adventure. Composed by Hamburg’s Periscope Studios, the soundtrack to this game is one of those cases where it really adds to the game experience rather than fading into the background. The voice acting is awkward in places — Sadwick’s voice especially sounds quite whiny at times — but doesn’t take away greatly from the overall experience.
And it is the experience which will make The Whispered World stick in your mind. It’s not trying to be modern and fancy, but rather embraces the roots of it’s genre — an experience of nostalgia. It has a few faults — a nasally-voiced protagonist, WAY too much dialogue at times, ridiculous puzzles — but these are just some things we’ve come to accept in traditional adventure games. Y’know what they say: Love isn’t thinking a game is perfect. It is knowing it isn’t, and loving it anyway.
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Things We Liked: Stunning 2D painted environments. Lovable hero and his cute sidekick. The fantasy fairytale feel of the whole game. Sad clowns. Fascinating narrative. Excellent soundtrack. Clever puzzles. Jokes and humor which appeals to all ages. The moving twist at the end.
Things We Disliked: The fluctuating difficulty levels. Puzzles when they didn’t follow common sense. Lack of hints or help. The fact that it can’t be played again with exactly the same experience. Sadwick’s voice actor. Too much dialogue. The regular price is a little high for a point and click.
Target Audience: Fans of point-and-click adventure games. Fans of the animated films of Disney or Studio Ghibli. Fans of fantasy stories. Fans of stunning hand painted art — the concept art included in the Extras is breathtaking. Fans of games such as The Longest Journey, Machinarium, or the Monkey Island series.
(The Whispered World – Developer: Daedalic Entertainment. Publishers: Viva Media/Deep Silver. Available for PC. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)
